Oscars: Deadline Vs Gold Derby Expert Prediction Smackdown In All Four Acting Races – Who Will Be The Big Surprise?

After dissecting the various possibilities in this year’s wild and wooly Oscar Best Picture race, Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil and I have a go at all four acting categories, where, if you believe the precursor awards shows, Rami Malek, Glenn Close and Mahershala Ali have come on strong in recent weeks to become front-runners in the Lead Actor, Lead Actress and Supporting Actor categories, respectively.

The Supporting Actress race is something else entirely, and is often the one that pops the biggest surprises among acting categories.

In this Smackdown segment (taped before this weekend’s BAFTA awards), I give my theories as to why I think The Favourite‘s Rachel Weisz just might pull it off and take a second career Oscar in this category (she won previously for The Constant Gardener in 2005). Now that she has won at BAFTA, I am sticking to my prediction even if no one else at Gold Derby’s betting site, among the experts at least, is joining me on this limb.

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There and elsewhere, If Beale Street Could Talk’s wonderful Regina King, the Golden Globe winner and truly the critics awards darling in the category, is the almost unanimous choice. I was disturbed, though, that she didn’t receive SAG or BAFTA nominations which is usually a prerequisite for success in this category. With BAFTA proving that having two stars from The Favourite (Emma Stone was the other nominee) competing in the same category isn’t necessarily a fait accompli that they cancel each other out, I am standing firm.

As for O’Neil, you will just have to watch this latest smackdown. Click on the video above.